Week 2: Winter

It’s time for another Personal History entry from me! This week’s topic is:

What was winter like where and when you grew up? Describe not only the climate, but how the season influenced your activities, food choices, etc.

Winter is never really the same around here. We’ve had periods of snowy winters and periods of no snow.

When we do have snow, boy do we have it! As long as I remember, when it snows like that I would go into work with my mother. It was one of my favorite activities. The picture above was taken in 1996 and she was working at a drug store. After that it was a 7-11 just outside of Washington, DC. I have a lot of pictures of this year. I think it’s the year where we went without power for 2 weeks! That’s a record for us still.

What do you think you’d do if you were a mother of three with the neighborhood kids and no power? My mother taught us how to make candles! We’ve always had a gas stove, it’s just what my mother prefers. So even though we didn’t have power, we had the stove. So she taught us how to make candles, we played board games, and I’m pretty sure we did a lot of shoveling. I even remember one year there were six of us shoveling for hours! We wanted to make sure that my dad could get back in the driveway. We shoveled and shoveled, and we still had quite a ways to go when he got home. He ended up just driving over it, but it was the thought that counts right?

During that snow storm, I remember the camping out in the living room. We all got out sleeping bags and flashlights. We stayed up late telling ghost stories. I was the youngest, so I was tortured of course. As for the food, I can’t really remember that. I’m sure we had a combination of soups and chili. I do love my mama’s chili!

My tastes haven’t changed much, these days there’s nothing better than curling up with a cup of hot chocolate and a bowl of mom’s chicken and noodles! For me there’s nothing more relaxing then snow falling and having a movie day. If you haven’t noticed movies are big in our family. We don’t change much during the winter, it’s just we do more indoors, together stuff.

We’re supposed to get some kind of winter weather today, and I plan on spending it with my genealogy database! I’ve been so busy organizing and doing other things I haven’t had a “genealogy day” in awhile. Hopefully this entry doesn’t sound scatterbrained. I do have an attention span problem when it comes to writing.

Note: This entry is part of a 52 week series called 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History.

One thought on “Week 2: Winter

  1. Greta Koehl says:

    Ha! We went through that same blizzard in ’96 in the DC area, too, and I mentioned it in my post on that subject this week. I don’t think our power was out that long, though. I also remember the flooding that followed when there was a sudden thaw.

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